


How Things Do Change

by BeastOfTheSea



Category: Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4622127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeastOfTheSea/pseuds/BeastOfTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The dark-haired teen knelt on the floor, awaiting his Lord's orders. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Things Do Change

**Author's Note:**

> HP/LV is not stated explicitly, but it is implied in a "captive of the Dark Lord" fashion. As such, there is probably dubcon/noncon offscreen, but it may be read as platonic captivity with a very condescending Dark Lord if you prefer.

The dark-haired teen knelt on the floor, awaiting his Lord's orders.

Subtly, he ground his teeth together. He loathed this. Had he ever been told he would end up living day after day at the mercy of his mortal enemy, existing for nothing more than to serve his every whim, he would have dismissed it as insanity. He wasn't like that. He was stronger than that. He would never -

"So ssspirited, my sssweet servant," the Dark Lord hissed, bending down to take him by the chin and make him look into the man's eyes. He knew from the inconsistency of the hissing that the Dark Lord did it just for effect - and because he hated it. It was a taunt, and a cruel one. "Are you sssure that you are a snake? I think, rather, that you would make a good kitten. An adorable kitten, a defiant-"

" _I am not a kitten!_ " he shouted, and regretted it as soon as he spoke. After insolence came the pain - almost always, the pain. His childhood might have given him a vast pain tolerance, but it had given him an equal aversion to testing it. He'd had quite enough of that for a lifetime.

But it seemed that, today, his Lord was feeling merciful. Or perhaps merely condescending. "What an _adorable_ kitten." The Dark Lord chuckled. "To think that I once... feared you. Regarded you as an adversary possessed of powers I knew not, a threat to my very life." The Dark Lord gave another chuckle - drier this time. "How things do change."

Not for the first time, he damned the Prophecy. If not for it, he would never have been in this position. 

"Do you ever wish Dumbledore were here to save you?" the Dark Lord asked in the tones of a rhetorical question. His jaw clenched so hard that his teeth ached. That he might view life under that manipulative old man as preferable to his current situation  _stung._ "Do you wish you were still a schoolboy, who could hide from the world behind your professors' skirts? Do you wish your mother could protect-"

"Don't _ever_ speak of my mother."

For that remark, he gladly would have taken a Cruciatus. But the Dark Lord merely looked contemplative. "You leap so readily to the defense of a woman you never knew? It is difficult to inspect the character of the dead; for all you know, had she lived, your childhood might have left you wishing for life as an orphan."

In response, he only glared at the Dark Lord with absolute hatred, wishing he could kill with his gaze alone. What he would give to be a basilisk Animagus at precisely this moment.

"You are a feisty one today, dear Horcrux," the Dark Lord said flippantly. "It is almost as though you have forgotten that I, and I alone, chose to spare you. Others cautioned me against it; those who thought I did not hear them whispered that it was madness. But, as I ascended towards the future upon a stairway made from the bodies of my enemies, I decided to bestow upon myself a trophy - a living spoil of war. And what better representation of all I had won than to have you reduced to a mere decoration in my palace, a broken toy kneeling at my feet - Tom Riddle?"


End file.
